MY VIEW: Juvenile justice reform has just begun

To quote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, "youth matters." In her majority opinion in Miller v. Alabama, decided June 25, Kagan traces a history of legal precedent to the logical conclusion that mandatory sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole are unconstitutionally cruel punishment for juveniles.

To me, as a juvenile justice advocate, the court's holding seems obvious, but juvenile law reform has not gone far enough. The same rationale differentiating youths from adults when considering the harshest sentences also underpins other compelling legal questions.

More than 100 years ago, in Weems v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized the "basic precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to both the offender and the offense." Through Miller and several other recent landmark juvenile cases, the court reaffirms that premise.

On that basis, why continue to allow states to charge those under 18 in adult court? Why incarcerate nondangerous juvenile offenders when the juvenile justice system was founded as a rehabilitative counterpart to the punishment-focused adult correctional model?

Now that Miller has cast a spotlight on the fundamental differences between the maturity and judgment of adults and adolescents, it is time to examine why the United States tries so many juveniles as adults. More than 200,000 juvenile cases go to adult court annually, despite the fact only 5 percent of juvenile arrests are for violent crime and only 24 percent are even for crimes against persons.

The original juvenile court framework permitted trying youths as adults in extreme circumstances. However, today's proliferation of transfers to adult court abuses what the pioneers of the system intended as a rare exception.

Juvenile sentencing is also outmoded and ineffective. Judges rely on incarceration as the framers of the juvenile court never would have supported. The United States jails more adolescents than any nation on Earth -- 336 per 100,000, five times more than the next-highest country.

To accomplish what? Up to 62 percent of youths released from juvenile custody are rearrested within three years. By contrast, Missouri, a model of reform by de-emphasizing incarceration, boasts a three-year reincarceration rate of 16 percent. Rehabilitation works; communities deserve to be safer, instead of merely feeling safer.

Beyond being vastly less effective, incarceration is also exponentially more expensive. The average yearly cost nationally to hold a juvenile in custody is more than $70,000, up to 20 times the price of alternatives. We are paying more but getting less.

However, there is hope. More than 20 states have recently enacted reforms or are in the process of doing so. The most expedient improvements will come from addressing overreliance on incarceration and the adult court system.

If the juvenile system held only those dangerous to the community or to themselves, the population of juvenile detention centers and correctional facilities would plummet by 90 percent. Juvenile departments would better meet a wide spectrum of individualized needs. Secure facilities, if more sparingly used, would cease to be money-hemorrhaging meeting halls for low-level juvenile offenders to compare notes with more experienced criminals.

Letting judges be judges will also return juvenile court to its roots. The judge, the impartial referee, is the most proper arbiter of whether a case merits what should be a rare transfer to adult court. Prosecutors with no duty to the accused, and legislators needing votes from constituents rattled by rare instances of high-profile juvenile crime, should not usurp the function of the unbiased judge.

Although the Supreme Court is gradually restoring the character of the juvenile court system, the recent decisions should not be unduly celebrated. Juvenile justice is still gasping for breath.

Matthew M. House is a juvenile justice advocate and family law mediator in private practice in Portland, Ore. Email: matthew@mediatormatthew.com.